In 2006, Artists Lita Albuquerque led an expedition to the farthest reaches of Antarctica near the South Pole to create the first installment of her global work Stellar Axis. The expedition was aided by a grant from the National Science Foundation and was the first and largest ephemeral art work created on the continent. The resulting installation consisited of an array of ninety nine fabricated blue spheres. The placement of each corresponded to the location of one of 99 specific stars in the antarctic sky above., creating an earthly constellation at the earth’s pole. As the planet rotated and followed its orbit the displacement between the original positions of the stars and the spheres drew an invisible spiral of the earths spinning motion.

The Stellar Axis Expedition’s journey to the ice ice included a team of experts resaechers and artists with Albuquerque at the healm. Their sole purpose was to pursue and materialize a sculpture and ephemeral event on a scale and in a place that was completely unprecidented.